I suddenly knew exactly why I was running around the forest in my underwear.

He tackled the handmaiden who now had me by the hair. They staggered, landing several feet away in a patch of withered ferns. I whirled, preparing to meet the next two handmaidens. They moved slowly, patiently, like icebergs drifting in an arctic sea. I looked from one to the other.

“Stop,” I commanded, trying to exude pheromones, gathering the power inside of me and pushing it out like wavering blasts of heat.

They paused.

Constantine and the other handmaiden were still fighting in the bushes, too far away to be affected by my compulsion.

“Drop your weapons,” I ordered the other two, who were still frozen in place, glaring at me. Seven stakes, a mini crossbow, three rapiers, five daggers, and a set of silver handcuffs landed in the snow. I reached cautiously for one of the rapiers. The weight was familiar and comforting in my hand. “Now go away and leave us alone.”

They turned and walked away, leaning as if they were fighting a wild wind at their back. They tried to fight the compulsion but couldn’t. I had a tiny delicious moment of smug satisfaction.

And then the handmaiden fighting Constantine whistled shrilly through her teeth signaling to the others, even as she dodged a vicious jab to the jugular.

The handmaidens were bad.

Being possessed was bad.

But this was so much worse.

Chapter 12

Lucy

It was my experience that when vampires start bowing and looking all formal, it’s best to get the hell out of the way.

Which I would have done if I wasn’t chained to a post.

There was more bowing and murmurs of “My lord” and “My prince” and two of the female donors strained at the end of their chains, smiling and showing cleavage. One of them actually sighed, like she was meeting someone from a boy band. It was embarrassing. Which could only mean one thing.

A Drake brother.

And since all but one of them were exiled on pain of death, it could only mean one person specifically.

Nicholas.

My palms went damp. I wasn’t sure why but I felt nervous and exposed, and it had nothing to do with the chains. The crowd parted and suddenly Nicholas was there, stalking toward me, his serious face cut in hard, uncompromising lines. His gray eyes flared silver, like jagged pieces of mirror sharp enough to slice through your skin. I half expected blood to be running down my arms.

“What is she doing here?” he asked. He sounded lethal and dark. It was hard to remember that this was the same seventeen-year-old Nicholas who’d given me a mix CD just last week. He stood like a man, not like a younger brother or a youngest son or any of the other things that defined him. They were still part of him, but the pieces now fit into a more complicated puzzle.

“She said she was here on your orders,” a guard replied, glaring at me. I lifted my chin and glared back.

“I mean, what is she doing chained to the tree,” Nicholas continued, so evenly the guard swallowed.

“Queen’s orders,” he replied quickly, defensively.

My boyfriend made a vampire guard at least twice his age nervous. I was kind of proud. Also? Really freaking nervous.

Because the truth was, I still didn’t know if he was broken.

“Unchain her,” Nicholas ordered while I tried to interpret his expression. He looked stronger and older.

“Beg pardon, but she hasn’t been vouched for,” the guard said.

Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “My sister isn’t here,” he said. “But I am. So Un. Chain. Her,” he repeated, slowly and emphatically, his fangs lengthening to killing points.

I actually shivered. My animal self, the one who reacted to lightning and strange sounds at night, urged me to run run run. My animal self was forgetting the cardinal rule with vampires: don’t run.

The clamp of iron around my aching wrist was replaced by the clamp of Nicholas’s pale fingers. It wasn’t any less confining or unbending. I grabbed his arm with my free hand. “Nicholas, what—”

He spun so fast, I got dizzy.

“You will address me as ‘Your Highness,’ ” he demanded, his voice like a whip slicing the air, or the tail of a poisonous snake. He backed me into the post, until the dangling empty chain pressed into my side. The bloodslaves parted around us. Nicholas’s hand slid up my bare neck, tilting my head forcibly to the side. He dragged his lips along my jugular, pausing with his lips over my ear. I swallowed, my throat so dry I could barely form words.

“Be scared.” His voice was barely a breath, tickling my ear, sending shivers over my skin.

I had to hope he was asking me to play along.

That he wasn’t actually serious.

He pulled away just slightly, his pupils wide and black as a pond at night, edged with pale fog and moonlight. I could almost, almost, catch a glimpse of the real Nicholas.

And then he yanked me along behind him until I was stumbling and tripping over my own feet. One of the bloodslave girls started to weep when she realized Nicholas wasn’t picking her. She made me irrationally angry. “Oh, grow a spine,” I snapped at her when she tried to touch Nicholas’s boot. “You’re giving all girls a bad name.”

Said the girl who was currently allowing her boyfriend to pull her about like a rag doll.

“I’m so going to punch you if this is a trap,” I muttered.

Nicholas didn’t even glance back at me and he didn’t pause until we approached the Drake tent. There was a tiered table full of burning candles and flowers on a rug out front. There were wine bottles of blood, pomegranates, and baskets of silver jewelry, all at the foot of a painting of Solange. I gaped at it.